THERE are many admirable things about Professor Mary Beard and her obvious common sense is one of them.

So all praise to the grey-haired one for objecting to the idea of quotas for women on television.

Not only would it lead to desperate presenters trying to get hold of anyone suitable, she said, but the women would suffer as they were obviously the token choice.

Too right. There should never be positive discrimination for women anywhere, not least because you end up with dross that makes the rest of us look bad.

Nowhere was this better illustrated than under New Labour and Blair’s utterly useless babes but the Tories haven’t been doing so well either, with one lady MP after another announcing she’s going to stand down.

While they might not have publicly had a women-only shortlist you rather suspect something along those lines was happening behind the scenes.

It’s very difficult being a professional woman, especially in television and politics, not least because it has only been 50 or so years that females have had the chance to shine in public life at all.

You can’t overturn thousands of years of culture quite as easily as that.

So yes, women generally have to be better than the men they’re competing with to succeed and no it isn’t fair because life isn’t.

But look at hugely successful women who have succeeded in male-dominated areas such as Madonna in the music industry or Margaret Thatcher in politics and they didn’t get to the top because they were given an unfair advantage.

They got there on merit, ambition and determination, not moaning about how biased it all is.

Positive discrimination really doesn’t help any woman in the long run.

Even if she genuinely was the best candidate for the job the suspicion will always be there that she got the job because she was a woman, not on merit.

Who wants that? It is incredibly tough getting to the top, all the more so if you don’t have a Y chromosome, but quotas are not the way to help any woman get ahead.

Liza Minnelli hides behind her unflattering streak of blue in her hair [liza-minnelli]

OH DEAR. Even Hollywood legends can have a bad day at the Oscars, as Liza Minnelli has just found out.

She had an unflattering streak of blue in her hair, was criticised for forgetting to wear a bra, unsuccessfully tried to get into the A-list selfie and then was mocked by host Ellen DeGeneres, who called her a Liza Minnelli impersonator, adding: “Seriously, sir.” For shame!